Search Results for: Madeline

My hats to off to the real First Responders in America these past few weeks, many have given their lives to help others survive the Pandemic.

I wrote yesterday that I feel like a First Responder at times, especially when someone at the Mansion has no clothes, and the students and refugee families from Bishop Maginn High School are hungry.

I love this work and am grateful for every minute of it. Thank you.

I first went to see Bev and Kyla at Carroll’s Trading Post, a consignment store that is my first stop when a Mansion resident arrives with no clothes, which has already happened several times this week.

I call Bev, tell her what I need and she walks through the shop with me picking out the right clothes. Their clothes are almost new, have been cleaned and disinfected.

We inspect each piece of clothing – X large tops, large bottoms and shorts – bag them and I take them over to the Mansion and leave them by the front door.

This first load costs $55. The clothes were fresh, clean and of high quality.  I’ll need more.

I called and let the Mansion know I was there outside – I’m still not allowed to go inside or get close.

I brought some paper flower arrangements for the residents who were sitting out on the porch and Bonnie came out and handed them out.

We wave and blow kisses to each other.

I miss these people, there are strong connections between us. At least I can wave to them from the driveway.

Then I sent to Stewart’s Convenience store to buy an Ice Cream Sundae Kit, vanilla, and strawberry.

It cost $90 and is enough for the residents and the aides. In this very hot weather, it is appreciated. Tomorrow, I’ll look for a stuffed animal for Ellen, she always asks for one. I stopped at the Post Office and bought stamps for Sylvie.

An aide said the residents need combs and brushes and anti-bacterial soap. I can get these at  Walgreen’s and perhaps the Dollar Store.

I checked on the Pen Pal list to make sure I had the right one. Letters and photos and cards and can be sent to these Mansion residents at 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y, 1816.

Edith, Dale, Gary, Ellen, Matt, Gerry, Sylvie, Joanne, Madeline, Brother Peter, Helen, Georgianna, Georgiann, Barbara, Alanna, Linda, Nancy, Annette, Peggie, Becky, Jean, Roberta, Ben, John, Jim, Claudia, Ruth.

You can also e-mail messages to [email protected]. The Pen Pal program is a hit, thank you so much.

After these messages, I drove to Hoosick Falls to give Kelsie at Jean’s Place $260 for tomorrow’s special meal – mashed potatoes topped with corn, crispy chicken, and cheese, with a gravy option.

Also five pies of different flavors. Yesterday I bought dinner for the night and overnight aides – subs, sandwiches, chicken tenders, garlic totters, and salads. It cost $94,

I want to keep the Mansion Fund flush throughout these weeks and months when the residents are in lockdown and can’t have visitors, even their families.

With the Disinfectant Fogger we bought, we are helping keep the residents safe. Not a single one has contacted the coronavirus. I am especially proud of that – the Mansion aides worked day and night to protect the residents – and thank you.

I want to keep this support going. Five of six new residents have arrived at the Mansion, I’ve not met them yet. Some of them need some help.

If you can and wish, you can support this work at a critical time via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Jon Katz, Mansion/Refugee Fund, P.O.  Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Thank you so much. Friday, the Bishop Maginn High School Senior Class graduates at the Albany Cathedral. I’ll be there. Thank you all for supporting the graduation as well.

We had a meaningful Pandemic and I gather it’s not going to be over for a long time.

I went to Battenkill Books this morning to inscribe the 37 books I’m buying for Bishop Maginn’s 2020 graduates.

The school is desperately trying to put a graduation ceremony together for their seniors, whose school year was disrupted by the coronavirus Pandemic and also the looting and disturbances in Albany, where many refugees live and work.

Some got sick, some lost their businesses and jobs. Families are going hungry.

Signing the books, I was so moved by the names I was inscribing, there it was, the great American Melting Pot, the kinder country, the one that opened our doors and hearts to the needy and vulnerable and gave them safe and meaningful lives beyond their imagination.

The names were a song to me, the song of the real America, the kinder one, the one we will get back in time.

I wanted to reprint the names from the piece of paper I used to sign the books this morning. Really, I wanted to cry.

If you say them aloud, you might want to cry also.

Osama Abdul Halimi; Anastasia Abram- Skinner; Olivia Amedio; Than Than Aye; Maria Bernardino; Julia Bernadino; Gay Blue; TaJenae Bunch; DaJenea Bunch; Ce Ce Cecchetto; Maya Clarke; Crismary Constante De Luna; O’Zaria Courtwright; Tamia Cousins; Ishanah Fraser; Hassani Hamilton; Christer Htoo; Pedro Inga; Mee Ka; Michael Marcellus, Giavanna McConney; Madeline McTigue; Joshua Miller; Blair Moo; June Moo, Uwamarhoro Muhorakeye (Peace); Martina Paliotta; Taisha Porter; Mue Lay Pow; Christer Say; Gabriel Silverstein; Eh Thaw Soe; Thang Trinh; Anthony Verdichizzi; Hser Nay Wan; Ethan Patrick Whiteley; Salomi Willingham-Rivera.

I love seeing those names. Our new citizens, our very proud graduates.

In the messages, I’m speaking to them. I  tell them that I’m sending these books to congratulate all of them, and also wish that they navigate their stars and following their dreams. I know them to be brave, honest, loyal, and good-hearted.

Please know, I told them,  that I and the people who work with me to support you are always here for you. I and Maria and Zinnia will be on hand at your graduation to give you these books ourselves. You’ve been through a lot.  Things will get better, you will help America to keep its wonderful promise to the world. Thanks for the existing and trusting and keeping the faith.

And thanks to my friend Connie Brooks for guiding me to this book, and for Jesmyn Ward for writing it. Keep it on hand for the dark times, it will lead you to light.

We have been supporting these children and their families all year and recently with gift cards for food, and for books and school supplies and computers, books, and microphones.

I was asked to provide support for the graduation ceremony and have been sending sashes, pins, badges, caps, baby candy jars and customized stylus/ballpoint pens, all custom made and engraved.

Since they lost much of their graduation year, I am happy to at least provide, thanks to Jesmyn Ward and the Army Of Good, a special book for a special ceremony, most likely to be held in the Albany Cathedral in the next month or so, health issues and state regulations permitting.

The crown jewel in my graduation package – suggested by Connie of Battenkill Books – is Ward’s wonderfully inspiring book, Navigate Your Stars, which was inspired by the amazing speech she gave at Tulane University’s commencement.

I am familiar with Jesmyn Ward, she is a brilliant writer and artist.

I gave a lot of people, including my writing students, her National Book Award-winning novel, Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones. I also gave a number of these novels to black writing students in several schools I volunteered at where there were minorities and refugees.

I wrote on my blog that I would inscribe the book with a message of congratulation – these are mostly refugee and inner-city kids who have lots of trouble to overcome.

Her message is perfect for them and badly needed now.

The book is about encouragement and empowerment. Ward herself has been through a lot and fought hard to get to her success. She also creates imagery for a number of magazines.

Since Jesmyn and I share the same publisher, Simon & Schuster, I let them know I was buying the books and inscribing them, which is common in publishing when people buy books for people.

Bookstores do it all the time, I am often asked to inscribe books other people request when they are not able to do it themselves if I am purchasing them. I write these inscriptions in my name, not theirs, there is no question about identity.

The people who get these gifts want to know who sent them and read any appropriate messages because the author isn’t always there. We authors love to have people buy our books and we love to hear about it when they do.

An assistant let her know, and she wrote to thank me.

I never heard of any author complaining about somebody buying 37 of their books as gifts and inscribing them with their names, not the authors. No one could possibly mistake me for Jesmyn Ward, and these kids could not ever have afforded to buy her books.

And no one has ever tried to tell me what I could and couldn’t write in them. But then, these are unusual times.

The school was delighted, so were their teachers, in fact, they were the ones who asked me to sign the books, they thought the kids ought to know where they came from.

My happy post was not up for a minute before I got this message sent to my blog:

“This is my first time commenting on your blog, but with everything going on in-country, I feel the need to speak up. I am an African American woman, like the author of this book. I am profoundly offended that you, a white male, are going to sign these books. That honor belongs to the author alone. What makes you think you can claim her experience? You mean well, but what you are doing is patronizing and racist. By all means, give the book, but have the decency not to sign it. It isn’t yours.”

The post made me furious, especially in a week when a Minnesota police officer was accused of murdering a black man who was pleading for nearly nine minutes for the officer to get his knee off his neck so he could breathe. He died minutes later.

It was quite clear to me that the sender came to me from Facebook and had never read a word of my blog. People often disagree with me, but very rarely in that tone and so cruelly.

I found the message hurtful and unthinking. Calling somebody profoundly racist at any time is rough, it is especially cruel and offensive now.  To accuse me of stealing the author’s work because I am a white male was equally shocking.

And I never presumed to claim her experience, the whole point was to celebrate her experience and share it with people who needed to hear it. That is not theft.

I didn’t respond well, I’m sorry to say, but I did respond honestly. Was this the conversation on race we needed to hear?

I wish I could patiently and instantly open a dialogue with someone who offended me so deeply, but I am not there yet.

Her feeling was that as an African-American writer herself, she deserved to be heard no matter what she said. And I was not entitled to write anything in an African-American writer’s book.

I was not in a mood to listen to that, not this week. It felt like a new kind of racial profiling to me, and if one kind is bad, why is another good?

I was sorry to get into this right now, I am feeling so good about these students and the nice graduation we are helping to provide for them. And I agree that this is a time to listen to African-Americans, not to pretend racism is something done by anyone other than us.

We battled for a day or two and I deleted all of the posts. She kept insisting I was wrong, and would not talk about how I felt about it.

They made me heartsick.

Perhaps we both learned something about how to not have a conversation about race. And also about how much we need to have honest conversations about race.

Her comments hurt me and briefly clouded what I think is one of the nicest things we could possibly do for these kids, especially now. The teachers all agreed with me. That’s why they suggested my doing it.

If my inscription was “profoundly racist,” then what is the killing of young black men by the police? And if the death of George Lloyd was profoundly racist, and I was profoundly racist, where do we go from there?

So I’ll leave it there, and let it go.

Conversations about race are important and necessary. It is also necessary to show respect to the people we are talking to, and listening to. I think black people know this better than anyone.

I didn’t do that, neither did she. I said her message was dumb. And I still think so. I offered to talk with her and a friend of hers who was defending her. Neither one accepted the offer.

For centuries, it seems our country has not been able to have this urgent conversation, this round is already degenerating into the usual he-said, she-said bullshit from the brain dead warriors of the left and the right. I just about fell into it myself.

Led by our divisive President, we are already inflaming weak-minded people into talking about leftist conspiracies and law and order, and looting rather than brutality. That conversation will go nowhere, just like mine.

I will yield to almost anything but treated contemptuously or disrespectfully. And I am always open to the idea that I need to learn how to listen better than I do now.

Sending these books off was thrilling for me, affirming and uplifting. And I am so happy I can now go and be with them for their graduation. We have already been through a lot together and I am very eager to see them off to their next chapter, along with Maria and Zinnia. They will make fine American citizens in every sense of the word.

This is the graduation gift bag I put together along with the Army of Good.  Key chains, pens, pins, sashes, cards,  hats, and about a dozen other things, including Jesmyn Ward’s book.

Good work, and thanks! Sue Silverstein of Bishop Maginn said today that I was cut off, I was no longer allowed to buy anything for the graduation. Okay..still there are those engraved scarves I loved…never mind.

Nancy Frakes of Manlius, New York (New York is a huge state, I have no idea where Manlius is) was kind and thoughtful enough to print out individual photos of her three border collies and send one to each resident at the locked-down Mansion.

She also sent a generous check for Price Chopper Gift Cards for the refugee families in need of food support.

I’m bringing them over to the Mansion this morning, then going to Battenkill Books to sign and personalize each of the 37 Jesmyn Ward book Navigate Your Stars.

I want to say something to each student, I have a list of all their names, and we’ll ship the books to Sue Silverstein.

Nancy is one of those amazing people I may never meet or even speak to who thanks me for permitting her to help people in need. Such generosity and empathy is what will get all of us through this time.

Thank you Nancy and bless you a million times.

The residents will so love these individual photographs, by tonight, they’ll be hanging in every room.

If you wish to support the Mansion work, you can contribute via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Jon Katz, Mansion Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

You can also participate in the Mansion Pen Pal program we set up when the Mansion was locked down. It still is. Cards and messages really help them understand the outside world knows they are alive.

So far, not a single resident has taken sick, a tribute in part to the $3,000 disinfectant fogger system that has made the Mansion so safe in such an efficient way.

The residents in the Pen Pal program (you can send messages via e-mail: ([email protected]) or by mail, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 are:

Dale, Gary, Edith, Ellen, Matt, Gerry, Sylvie, Joanne, Madeline, Brother Peter, Helen, Georgianna, Georgiann, Barbara, Alanna, Linda, Nancy, Annette, Peggie, Becky, Jean, Roberta (Bert), Ben, John, Jim, Claudia, Ruth.

One of the Mansion aides is struggling to buy food for herself and her two children. She is an especially loving and extraordinarily hard-working aide who got sick recently (not the virus) and was not able to work.

I’d like to get her some gift cards, I’m going to buy about $300 for her. If anyone wishes to help, you can purchase some Price Chopper Gift Cards and send them to me at Jon Katz, 2502 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y.,12816, or you can send money to me via Paypal, [email protected], or at my post office box, Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Any purchase over $300 will need to be activated via e-mail a couple of days after purchase.

Please mark those “for aides” in the message box on the Price Chopper Gift Card Order Page.

I am bringing her $75 worth of cards today to ger her through the weekend. Thanks as always for your support. The two refugee families we are focusing on right now are still sick and at home. I believe I have some gift cards coming in for them, and thanks, thanks, thanks.

I miss Sylvie, one of my Mansion friends. I haven’t seen her in weeks, except to wave through a window, and the state doesn’t want outsiders coming around to the Mansion at all right now.

But we are in touch. Sylvie is my Mansion Pen Pal, I send her stamps and envelopes and she writes me a letter almost every day.

In today’s letter, she writes about how much she loved her mother and also thanks me for the lunches I’ve been sending over to the Mansion via Jean’s Place every Wednesday.

Sylvie is one of the many remarkable characters I’ve met at the Mansion. The daughter of an American diplomat send to Europe after World War II, she saw the harrowing aftermath of the war.

She got ill in Europe and ended up spending most of her life in different institutions. She had a boyfriend she loved very much who died in the hospital where she was saying. He loved bingo.

In his honor, she refuses to play bingo.

She uses up stamps much faster than I can replace them, she writes letters day and night.

Sylvie is a devout Jehovah’s Witness and writes extensively about Jehovah and faith. The Mansion is a Medicaid Assisted Care Facility.

We started the Pen Pal Mansion Program when the Pandemic started and the residents could no longer have visitors. People can write letters via e-mail – [email protected] – or to the Mansion directly – The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

The residents participating in the program are Edith, Dale, Gary, Ellen, Matt, Gerry, Sylvie, Joanne, Madeline, Brother Peter, Helen, Georgianna, Georgiann, Barbara, Alanna, Linda, Nancy, Annette, Peggie, Becky, Jean, Robert (Bert), Ben, John, Jim, Claudia, Ruth.

Thanks, these messages mean the world to them, especially now.

The Army Of Good has had a landmark time these past few weeks. I can’t quite believe all that we have done.

Yesterday, we sold out the new Amazin Bishop Maginn coronavirus wish list; we bought $600 worth of mandated safety signage, plexiglass shields, and infrared thermometers, social distance tapes for the floor. This means the school can open in September.

We also bought a $600 fogger disinfectant system that will enable the staff to spray the lobby, principal’s office, and classrooms in minutes and safely. No chemicals, all-natural disinfectants.

To date, we have purchased $18,000 Price Chopper Gift Cards for the Bishop Maginn Students and family members who are at risk of going hungry, especially since the area’s food stamp and rent assistance programs are overwhelmed. This program is continuing; you can learn how here.

The need is great and will be acute for awhile.

We also rushed more than $800 to a family in extreme need – sick parents, hungry kids, back rent piling up. We bought them the time they needed to get some permanent help.

Because of this program, no member of the Bishop Maginn family has gone without healthy food for themselves and their children.

We purchased $1,000 worth of graduation gifts, customized pens, hats,  candy jars, and pins for each of the 37 graduating students.

Even though the refugee students have lost their regular graduation, we will see they have a neat gift bag. It looks like there will be a graduation ceremony in Albany, details to come.

As to the Mansion, their $3,000 fogging system is working beautifully, helping the residents stay safe at a dangerous and critical time.

I hoped to be able to read to the residents from outside, but no one but the staff is now permitted to get close to any of the residents. It makes sense to be very safe right now.

Jean’s Place is catering weekly special Wednesday lunches for the Mansion – $260 a lunch, including pies – and I am orderly weekly ice cream sundae kits for everyone.

We are also ordering dinners for the evening and overnight staff. Food is a big morale booster.

We have had a strong hand in helping Jean’s to hang on until things open up, which will be soon.

We’ve ordered easels, art supplies, books, and movies for the residents.

No reports of the virus there. Keep your fingers crossed. I miss them, and they miss me and Maria and Zinnia, but we are happy to be able to help from a distance. We’ve made a difference.

Our very successful Pen Pal program continues. If you wish, you can choose a Mansion resident as you Pen Pal and send letters, photos cards,  or e-mail messages ([email protected] will receive and distribute them).

The mailing address is the Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

The residents wish to receive mail are Edith, Dale, Gary, Ellen, Matt, Gerry, Sylvia, Joanne, Madeline, Brother Peter, Helen, Georgianna, Georgiann, Barbara, Alanna, Linda, Nancy, Annette, Peggie, Becky, Jean, Robert (Bert), ben, John, Jim, Claudia, Ruth.

Thanks. If you wish to support this Refugee/Mansion work, you can do so via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Thanks so much.